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Labour’s ‘stealth’ road schemes

Labour has quietly approved road-building schemes worth more than double the Tory programme that sparked mass protests by environmentalists in the early 1990s.

The traffic generated by the £13 billion of new highways will add 1m tons of carbon dioxide to Britain's greenhouse gas emissions every year, according to new research estimates.

The findings highlight the reversal in Labour's policy over the past 10 years.

The party came to power in 1997 with a list of green promises, and John Prescott, who had responsibility for transport, scrapped many Tory schemes. But Transport 2000, the lobby group that carried out the new study, said the government had now revived many of them.

"Labour have been very clever about this," said Rebecca Lush, roads campaigner for the group. "The Tories had a single budget for road-building, so their spending was visible, but under Labour there are several different funding streams, so it's